Unscripted: Imam Khomeini & US calculations

Our featured guest for today's program is Alastair Crooke.

Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat, and is the founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, an organization that advocates for engagement between Islam and the West.

Amongst his other career highlights, he was a former advisor on West Asia issues to Javier Solana, the former EU Foreign Policy Chief.

He also has extensive experience with resistance movements like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Crooke has said that Imam Khomeini was an Islamic cleric, a philosopher and a poet of high standing: pursuing what is often a private and personal voyage of inner intellectualism.

He somehow, incredibly, in the words of Jaques Berques, took in hand his people; gave them healing, authenticity and a solution to their crisis.

He gathered up a tradition and forged a new equilibrium: one which would offer renewal through a grand "sewing together" of dispersed parts, making the present "an organic whole", not some mere syncretic assembly of parts.

The tradition, on which he drew, was of Mulla Sadra, Ibn Arabi, Mir Damad's.

This interview also covers Imam Khomeini negative view of the Israeli regime, like when he said "Neither our problems nor the Palestine issue would not be resolved unless we follow Islam to resolve our problems".

Nations must separate themselves from actions of states.

Why does Israel rule those countries that have every resources and power?

The reason is the division among Islamic nations and they just simply look at Israel's crimes against Lebanon and Palestine.